More than 600,000 laptops lost each year at US airports

Humphrey Cheung, 2nd July 2008

Washington DC – Travelers lose nearly 637,000 laptops a year at U.S. airports every year, according to a new survey by the Ponemon Institute. At 36 of the largest airports, a staggering 10,278 laptops are lost/stolen every week. Medium-sized airports have approximately 2000 lost or stolen laptops at week. Amazingly, the survey showed that 65% to 69% of the missing laptops are never reclaimed, but that’s probably because 77% of the victims say they have no hope in recovering the laptop.

That’s A LOT of missing laptops, but here in the office were asking ourselves how do you lose a laptop in the airport? Ponemon analysts say most of the laptops go missing at security checkpoints and I can understand the highly stressful situation of taking off all your belongings while nervously waiting for your upcoming flight, but when you pop your laptop on the conveyor belt, it has to come out the other side right?